life. The country, trembling under the agitation
of the slave question, was steadily seeking a
condition of equilibrium which could be stable
only in the complete downfall of slavery. Unknown
to them, yet existing, the great question of the
day was gradually being solved; and in its solution
was working out the salvation of an enslaved people.
Well did that noblest of women, Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe, sing a few years after:


"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the
Lord;
He is tramping out the vintage where the grapes of
wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible
swift sword;
This truth is marching on.

"I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred
circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews
and damps;
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and
flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.

"I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows
of steel;
'As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace